


When You Can't Get Away From It

by Callaeidae3



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Keith (Voltron) Whump, Sensory Deprivation, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 04:07:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16736796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callaeidae3/pseuds/Callaeidae3
Summary: BTHB: Tied to a PoleShiro and Keith are captured by the Empire. The interrogator discovers a way to get one of them talking.





	When You Can't Get Away From It

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by @arwenride! :) You can find the bingo card I'm writing this from on my Tumblr @callaeidae3!

The first thing the interrogator does is blindfold him. Keith’s arms are strained out on either side of him, the chains connecting the manacles on his wrists to the cell walls pulled taunt; there’s no way he can avoid the cloth that’s tied around his eyes.

His heartbeat picks up with the loss of sight, his hearing fine-tuning. There’s a rustle of clothing, silence, and then cold fingers brace themselves his temples and some kind of synthetic material is pressed into his ears.

Keith jerks backwards. His head his full of his panicked breathing, his racing pulse.

He can’t see.

He can’t hear.

Vibrations of heavy feet come near.

_No no no….what are they doing what are they –_

Hands clamp down on his arms, the arms of the two people holding him wrapping their arms around his to pin them in place. The manacles are unlocked. Before Keith can try to struggle to get free, though, he’s being shoved forward, forced to walk into the space ahead of him he cannot see…

A rush of air. They’re outside the cell. They make a right turn and start marching down the hallway. Keith digs his bare heels into the floor but he’s tugged onward without any real strength needed on his captor’s behalf.

_Where are they…?_

Something’s not right. The interrogator didn’t even torture him even though Keith had been chained up ready for it while he was still unconscious. This ship is supposed to be one Zarkon’s close commander’s fleets, too.

Unless he’s being taken to a different room to be tortured. Why though?

_Oh no…Shiro._

The way the interrogator’s eyes had gleamed when Keith flinched under his touch. The smirk on his face when he slapped a hand down on Keith’s shoulder and he’d flinched again.

They’re going to use him to torture Shiro instead.

Keith’s only indication of Shiro’s state is the faint tangy taste of blood in the air. He tries to keep his expression neutral. He can’t see and he can’t hear but if Shiro’s in this room, then he most certainly can. Shiro’s meant to be able to.

That’s why they’ve brought Keith in. They must’ve realised early that any attempts to get Shiro to talk were in vain…all but one.

He’s walked a few paces into the room before he’s slammed against a wall. No, not a wall. The two soldiers holding his arms keep moving forward, pulling Keith hard up against the pole, forcing him to look sideways.

Keith swallows hard. Shiro’s in that direction, isn’t he?

His wrists are held in a vice grip. Some kind of cord or rope is wrapped around them, weaving around and in between his arms, and then it’s being wound around his forearms and binding him wrist to elbow. His wrists are then forced up above his head and tied there to the pole itself.

He can’t move. The hands holding him let him go but he can’t move. The only choice he has is whether he’ll stand or kneel. Keith braces his feet on either side of the pole and tries to calm the adrenaline coursing inside of him.

He won’t kneel until the choice of standing is taken away from him too.

Someone’s talking. Keith can’t hear what they’re saying, only the rise and fall of their tone. The abrupt rises in tone suggest it’s the interrogator. His endless spiel suggests that he’s talking to Shiro. So far nothing’s happening, it’s just the interrogator talking….instructing….warning…

Keith pulls at the bindings around his wrists but they don’t budge. Whatever they’re going to do to him, it’s going to start soon. Really soon.

And Shiro’s going to have to watch it all. Maybe he can help him, even in the least?

He clears his throat. “Shiro, I’ll be fine. D-don’t say anything. I can handle it.”

His voice sounds weird in his head. It feels weak in his throat.

“I’ll be fine. Whatever happens, don’t worry about me. Just stay strong. We’ll get through this. We just have to horrhgmm-!”

Keith’s gagged before he can finish the sentence. It’s tugged hard, causing his jaws to ache when the knot is tied. The pressure against the base of his skull is just as bad. The fear…the fear of what’s coming is worse.

His fear for Shiro, though…that’s the worst of it all.

A hand on his shoulder. Keith’s breath hitches. He squeezes his eyes shut even though they’re blindfolded and begs himself to stay silent.

The person behind him chuckles at something. Something cold and sharp touches the back of Keith’s neck. The hand on his shoulder shifts to take the collar of his flight suit and then the knife’s dragged diagonally down across his shoulders.

Keith clenches his teeth on the gag. His nostrils flare and he curses himself for letting Shiro see any signs of distress so quickly. But then fingers slip between the cut in the material, grab the lower edge of the cut and _tear…_

His back’s exposed. Air on shoulder blades, on his spine, on his lower back. He’s shaking now.

Is he going to be whipped? Burned? Stabbed?

The hand strokes the exposed skin of his shoulder blades. Keith flinches, hard. He struggles, jerking left, right, trying to get away from the hand _but it never leaves him_. He’s tied too tightly to the pole to be able to get away from it at all.

There’s no whip striking him, nothing burning him, no knifes making him bleed.

Just the hand. Sweeping back and forth across his shoulders, fingers trailing over his spine, moving up to rest their claws on the back of his neck.

Keith’s crying before he can stop himself. He wrestles with the rope but it doesn’t let him go. He wants to throw up but if did while the gag’s still in his mouth he’d choke.

The interrogator then starts running his fingers through his hair and Keith loses his voice to sobbing. The blindfold soon soaked with tears, the gag with both tears and spit. His wrists hurt, his arms hurt, his chest hurts, but the pain in his throat from fear and adrenaline and crying just keeps getting worse.

He forgets about Shiro being in the room with him.

The fingers are yanked from his hair. A sizzling noise. The rope around his wrists come loose.

Someone catches him. The arms are strong and protective. The gag is cut and pulled out of his mouth. The sizzling sounds close to his ear and he whimpers, but then the blindfold’s coming off and the ear plugs are coming out and –

_Oh gosh._

Noise and colour and bayards flashing and voices and movement. Keith loses his breakfast. Yellow and white armour holds him as he hurls and trembles and screams amidst the vomiting and the crying.

The sizzling noise saws through chain. Shiro’s calling out to him, Lance’s bayard stops firing. The arms holding him pick him up as soon as he’s done throwing up. Keith shuts his eyes against the swirling sensation of his sight returned, tries not to be overwhelmed by the loudness of the voices and the footsteps and the screams in his ears that are his own.

It’s awful. It’s like the time his harness malfunctioned in the simulator back at the Garrison. He’d flown the ship too high under an overhang, clipped a wing and been sent tumbling about the interior of the simulator. He’d been so shaken that Shiro had had to carry him out.

It’s not Shiro carrying him now, though. It’s Hunk. Behind them, Shiro’s muttering something about how much he hates stress positions. Lance’s bayard fires a couple of times up ahead and Pidge takes out what is presumably a sentry that tries to sneak up on them from behind.

Keith doesn’t calm in the slightest until the only thing against his bare back is a blanket. Even Red’s presence doesn’t reach him the way it usually does. His head’s too full of memories, of bad things, of people hitting and bruising and shouting and slapping. His blood’s too full of adrenaline.

He refuses to let anyone come near him. He presses his back against the corner of the cockpit of the Green Lion, eyes fixed on the ground but not seeing, fingers digging into the blanket and holding it tight around himself, mind fixated on Red’s presence anchoring him through the chaos going on inside his head.

People try to say things to calm him down but Keith doesn’t listen to any of it. Red, however, speaks not in words but in feelings, and it’s those feelings that eventually break through the wall of the fear.

Feelings of assurance, of calm.

_Safe, like the warmth of fire in the cold of night._

_Calm, like the easy lapping of the tide against the shore._

Keith breathes in and he breathes out and he focuses on that and that alone.

_Safe…._

_….calm…_

By the time they arrive back at the Castle, Keith’s recovered enough to let Shiro hug him. Keith sinks into the embrace when he does.

_Safe…calm…_

 

 


End file.
